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Lindsey Buckingham Ready For Fleetwood Mac Return in 2013

New album rumblings precede a new tour, set to kick off in the first half of next year.

Lindsey Buckingham is ready to get back into Fleetwood Mac in the coming year, but he was happy to go his own way in 2012.

Though he expected the band to be working this year rather than in 2013 -- it held off to allow Stevie Nicks more time to support her "In Your Dreams" album -- Buckingham took the opportunity to stage his first completely solo concerts, which have been captured on the new digital album "Lindsey Buckingham: One Man Show." "It's been an experiment on any number of levels," Buckingham tells Billboard. "It was not something I had an agenda to do, but I'd been kind of thinking about i for awhile. After Fleetwood Mac's plans got shuffled around, I had a chance to try something new, and this is what it was. I'm always looking for something that's slightly outside of my comfort zone whenever I can."

Buckingham, who had toured with his own band in 2011, acknowledges that the one-man show "was kind of odd the first couple of nights; I kept looking around to see where everybody else was. But that fell away, and I think it really did turn into a real focal point for the audience, where there was nothing else up there but me so they could really zoom in on what was going on. I always talk about looking for the center, and I think this was an obvious extension of that."

Particularly intriguing, Buckingham adds, was using technology to layer additional guitar parts into several of the songs during the shows. "When I came to a moment of clarity where I realized I was going to want to do 'Go Your Own Way' or 'So Afraid,' and the logical conclusion is you've got to be able to hit a pedal or have a loop or have a guitar part coming in," he explains. "You're not fooling anybody in doing that. You're not trying to pretend it's not there. But it kind of caps off the concept of this (one-man show) idea. I think that's the point where the show really kinda completes itself." And bloopers, he says, have not been an issue. "It's been pretty seamless for the most part. It's just a matter of keeping your eye on the ball as things are going. You'd think that because you're so exposed there'd be more of that, but so far that hasn't happened."

Buckingham says he's looking forward to doing more one-man shows and expanding their repertoire, but his focus is turning to Fleetwood Mac, which is expected to announce its 2013 tour dates soon, with, he says, a likely early April start. "I'm looking forward to it," Buckingham says. "I get to go out there and try these other things on my own, and the more that defines me as an individual and the more it tends to differ from the Fleetwood Mac experience, then the more I'm able to just let the group thing go where it's gonna go."

And, he says, that may include some new music. Buckingham says he, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie convened earlier this year in his home studio and "sat down and tracked some stuff," which he's recently shown to Nicks for her input. "We may be able to organize something -- I wouldn't think a whole album, but possibly something before we hit the road or, if not then, possibly something a little more extensive after the tour, depending on what everybody wants to do," Buckingham says. "The material is quite good, but we have to get everybody on the same page with that, and we'll see where it goes."